Cubs Get an Arm That Wasn’t On the Radar

Everybody wants Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman. If the Yankees elect to sell off, everybody will want Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman. I don’t need to explain to you why — they are two very obviously dominant left-handed, late-inning relievers. If the Yankees sell, they’ll ask for a high price. Teams, in turn, will pay high prices. You know how the trade deadline works.

People have linked the Cubs and the Yankees. The Cubs don’t need to improve much, but they’d like a steadier bullpen, and they could use a steady lefty. The Yankees present options. On a different tier, I figured the Cubs might have interest in Will Smith. I never once thought about Mike Montgomery. The Cubs just traded for Mike Montgomery. It might not be all they do, but it’s what they did today.

Montgomery, of course, isn’t Miller, and he isn’t Chapman. Few relievers are. But he is an interesting pick-up, and not only because the Cubs plucked him from another team that’s kind of in the race. It’s a neat trade for the Cubs and Mariners to make — you can see how it could improve them both. I should give you the full details:

Cubs get:

• Mike Montgomery
• Jordan Pries

Mariners get:

• Dan Vogelbach
• Paul Blackburn

I don’t want to be cruel, but I don’t have anything to say about Blackburn and Pries. They’ve been effective in the minors. They could be something someday. But Montgomery and Vogelbach are the keys, and they’re both nifty players. You might’ve already known how Vogelbach is nifty. Montgomery has quietly embraced a role change.

So let’s talk about Montgomery first. It wasn’t clear whether he’d make the Mariners’ roster out of spring training, but until today he’d been with the team for months, having moved into the bullpen. Not all starters are able to do that seamlessly, but Montgomery has taken to the responsibility, and this is a big reason why he’s gained three miles per hour on his fastball. There are 496 pitchers who’ve pitched in the majors in both 2015 and 2016. Montgomery’s velocity increase ranks sixth-highest, because of the shorter spurts. You have to take seriously any lefty who can work the ball into the mid-90s.

And while Montgomery has been a left-handed reliever, he’s gotten outs against both lefties and righties alike. He still works with a broad repertoire, and with righties at the plate, he’s not afraid to pitch inside. Working out of the bullpen, Montgomery has allowed an OPS of just .560, and that ranks 17th in baseball out of all relievers with at least 40 innings. For the sake of comparison, Cody Allen has allowed a .605 OPS. Montgomery’s deal is that he’s seldom allowed extra-base hits. He’s kept most of the balls in play on the ground, and among relievers he’s managed one of the very lowest hard-hit rates.

So Montgomery has been hard to square up. He hasn’t had a huge platoon split, and he’s shown excellent arm strength. I’ve got one more thing to add: As a Mariner, Montgomery pitched with a worse-than-average strike zone. Some of that could be his fault, sure, but the Mariners haven’t had the best receivers, and based on some estimates, Montgomery has gotten 27 fewer strikes than you’d expect. There’s a 3.1-point difference between his strike rate and his expected strike rate, and in those terms, only three pitchers have worked with worse zones. I’ll simplify all this. Because of the strike zone, one could argue Montgomery has pitched even better than his numbers. He’s likely to get a friendlier zone in Chicago.

Montgomery is useful now, in a few different ways, and he comes with several years of team control. That might make him an unusual piece for a decent team to surrender, but the Mariners also have Vidal Nuno, and Charlie Furbush is just about back. The Mariners preferred the useful Vogelbach. Right away, he’s insurance in case they grow sick of Adam Lind. And it doesn’t hurt the Cubs too much, because Vogelbach had nowhere to go. In Chicago, Vogelbach was blocked. In Seattle, Montgomery might’ve been redundant. It’s the recipe for a fairly even swap.

Vogelbach is a hitter. Sometimes people use “hitter” as a synonym of “position player.” Dan Vogelbach is not a position player. He’s a hitter, who might be able to fake it on a consistent basis as a first baseman. The one real tool is the bat, so he’s long been destined to end up in the American League. It was just a matter of what the Cubs would settle for. They settled for a lefty swingman, giving up a very different sort of lefty swingman.

This year, Vogelbach has been one of the best hitters in Triple-A. That’s not a great surprise, either, with the 2015 power numbers dragged down by some lower-body injuries. He has power, and he has patience, and his contact rate is actually several points above the league average. He has what they’d call an advanced approach, and given the numbers and his body, he feels like a classic Moneyball kind of prospect. Along with being one of the most productive hitters in Triple-A, he also has one of the lowest swing rates. He’s patient and powerful.

And he’s limited by everything else. Most players with this profile come up short of becoming David Ortiz. Vogelbach doesn’t run well, and he never will. He doesn’t field particularly well, and he never will. So for him to be a big-league success, he has to hit. The bar is set pretty high. Because of the limitations, Vogelbach has a lower ceiling. The bat feels safe — it’s just a matter of whether he’ll slug enough to be a regular.

The Mariners haven’t had a great first-base situation, and they didn’t have a long-term solution. The Cubs haven’t had a great lefty-reliever situation, and I guess maybe they didn’t have a long-term solution. Montgomery helps the Cubs now, and he can go multiple innings. Vogelbach might be able to help the Mariners now, and even if they stick with Lind, 2017 isn’t that far away. It’s easy to see how either side could ultimately win the trade, but it’s also easy to see why the trade was agreed to.

To this point, the Cubs haven’t splurged for Andrew Miller or Aroldis Chapman. They did pick up a hard-throwing lefty, though. It’s a more interesting trade than it might’ve sounded like at first.